


Walking After Midnight

by Empatheia



Category: Final Fantasy IX
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Open Relationships, Post-Game(s), Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 07:59:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12054693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empatheia/pseuds/Empatheia
Summary: Zidane can't stay, and she can't leave, so she is lonely much of the time. To ease it, sometimes she leaves her crown on her throne for the night and becomes Dagger once again.





	1. Leading Lady

**Author's Note:**

> Yet more 750words entries from earlier this year. I do intend to give it an ending at some point.

The queen sat by her window and watched the city live. From this height, the people and wagons in the street seemed like colourful blood, pulsing with the river's heartbeat. The lifeblood of her land. Her Alexandria.

She did not regret her choice or her throne.

Sometimes, she did miss travelling with Zidane, all the adventure and wonders she had seen while running for salvation. Some of that yearning might have been assuaged if Zidane himself had agreed to stay, but he hadn't, and she had known long before she asked that he would tell her no in one way or the other. If he had stayed for her, he would have withered. He wasn't meant for castles or politics or the day to day humdrum of massive responsibility.

So she was happy to see him when he came, and missed him when he was gone, but she asked nothing more of him than what he gave. She knew he already gave her all he could.

The mini-theatre in the lowtown district had taken off quite successfully, to the surprise of everyone but Ruby herself. Several Tantalus members were always there to put on the shows. When the weight of her realm because too much, Garnet put on her old white hood and slipped down through the slowing evening throng to drink a large mug of beer and watch Tantalus entertain the commonfolk.

She had not gone down in quite some time. Even with Cid back on his throne, tensions with Lindblum never quite died down entirely, and there were always border problems to discuss and remedy. Skirmishes, disagreements, stealthy attempts to claim land for one crown or the other. It never ended. She was so tired.

A small stone sailed through the air to strike the stonework beside her head, missing her only narrowly. A few moments later, a second one followed it, this one aimed a bit better.

Gathering up her voluminous silken skirts, Garnet stood and peered over the edge of the stonework to the courtyard below.

Marcus grinned genially up at her. He waved.

She frowned at him, but felt her spirits lifting already. In the beginning, she and Marcus had gotten off to a bit of a rocky start, but she had earned his respect along the way and he had certainly earned hers. It would have been good to see any member of Tantalus down there inviting her away from her duties, but it was especially good to see him.

Holding up her hand, she folded down all but three fingers, requesting that he wait a little until she could come down to meet him.

She shut her door against her servants, then changed into something less constricting, fetched the rope from the closet where she kept it for this express purpose, and rappelled down the castle wall with the ease of long practice to land with graceful balance in front of Marcus.

Garnet, she left up in the castle. She was Dagger once more.

"It never gets old, watchin' you do that," he mused, one side of his mouth quirked up around the little fang there.

"It never gets less fun," she informed him with a grin of her own. "So, what am I summoned to tonight?"

He shrugged. "Ruby's laid up. Twisted her knee coming down off the stage last night and still can't put much pressure on it."

Immediately concerned, Dagger wished she had brought her rod. She could cast healing spells without one, but they weren't nearly as powerful as they could be with proper focus. "Does she need healing?" she asked.

Marcus shook his head. "Naw, she's been looked at. It just needs to heal up on its own. Don't worry about it. Anyhow, the crew was thinking about doing  _ I Want to Be Your Canary _ tonight, but we can't really do it without our star. So...."

Dagger's eyebrows rose.

"Well, I guess you've probably figured it out already," Marcus continued with a half-shrug. "We know you're familiar with the part and all, so I thought I'd run over and ask. Couldn't hurt, right?"

Drawing herself up to the height of her common dignity, Dagger smiled and cut a bow. "I'd be honoured," she said. "When does the curtain rise?"

"Ain't no curtain," Marcus said with a laugh, "but we'll be getting started around half past seven, I figure."

Frowning, Dagger looked up at the sky. "That can't be more than an hour off," she said.

He nodded agreeably in confirmation.

"We'll have to run," she realized. "Let's go!"

*

Her breath had returned by the time the crew was finished stuffing her into her costume, but she still felt a bit sweaty and dishevelled, which was unfortunate. Thankfully, Cinna seemed very determined to disguise her beyond the ability of her own mother to recognize her, and he had gotten much better with those paints and powders lately.

Blank, deftly weaving around Cinna, pinned her hair up to her head and draped a long silver-white wig over it all. It looked absurd at first, but as he tucked things into place and tugged it into alignment, it began to look... if not quite natural, at least pretty.

"Break a leg," Ruby muttered from the corner when she finally stood up to get ready for the stage.

"Then we'd be down  _ two _ leading ladies," Marcus pointed out. He looked quite smart in his own costume, all dark blue velvet. The ever-present faded red bandanna was gone, and she was surprised to learn that he had hair under there, pale brown and cut pragmatically short. His eyes, no longer so overshadowed, were a shade of grey that made her think of stones beside a riverbed.

He wasn't handsome. He would never be that, with his blunt jaw and heavy brows and defiant underbite, but he had a dignity about him that somehow made up for all of that.

Dagger stepped onto the platform and prepared herself. It was so nice to focus on something so small and cheerful as this. She could forget her burdens for a little while, leaving them behind to squeeze her stripped-down self into the container of Cornelia.

At the end, when she threw herself upon the sword and swooned mournfully into Marcus' arms, the crowd threw flowers onto the stage, and they held the position for a good minute. She wasn't a big woman, but she weighed enough that holding her up ought to have given anyone some difficulty. Marcus didn't even tremble.

Afterwards, he caught her shoulder with a large hand. "Thanks, your highness," he said quietly.

"None of that, now," she said, scowling at him. "I'm just Dagger right now. Besides, I should be thanking  _ you _ . I really needed this respite."

"Feel free to drop by and pinch hit any time, in that case," he said with a grin.

"I might take you up on that. No promises, though."

Gathering up a few of the thrown flowers into her arms, she borrowed a ribbon from the hair table and bundled them up into a makeshift bouquet.

Seeing Marcus' baffled look, she smiled. "To remind me," she said. "It'll be nice to have a little colour in my study."

"Better come down for more when those wilt," he said.

She clasped his shoulder and rubbed it with her thumb, a small affectionate gesture for someone who was wary of hugs. Then she walked out into the star-hung Alexandrian night and went back to Garnet's life.

**x**


	2. Travellers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old friends in Lindblum.

Garnet was tired.

It had been a long day, full of quarrelsome ministers and missed trains, and surely that had contributed. She had been tired already when she'd gotten up that morning, though, and thought she would be wearier yet on the morrow.

It was a heavy mantle, the leadership of a realm. She was honoured to carry it and did not resent it, but oh, how it weighed on her.

What she ought to do was go to bed. The sun had long since set, and she had eaten her evening repast an hour ago. It wasn't her accustomed bedtime just yet, but perhaps it would help to turn in a little early.

Instead, she donned a dark red cloak with a deep shadowing hood — a gift from Amarant, who rarely visited but occasionally sent her things via the Moogles for reasons only he knew — and slipped out of Lindblum Castle into the night.

Lindblum did not have a particularly boisterous nightlife, even in comparison to quiet Alexandria, but it did have the theatre. It was a long trip from the castle to the lower city, but she was there before she knew it, standing at the edge of an excited crowd.

"What's playing?" she asked the nearest person, taking care to ensure the light of the lamps was not illuminating her face too much.

The local woman turned, flushed with anticipation. " _ Ipsen's Journey _ ," she said.

Dagger frowned. "I'm not familiar with that work," she said.

"Not from around here, are you?" the woman asked with a cheerful grin. "It's new. Tantalus wrote the script themselves."

"Tantalus?" Dagger asked, startled. She hadn't expected to find them here, now, but perhaps she should have. They had a new ship now, and travelled between the major cities regularly to put on their shows. Lindblum was too dense a city for them to easily use their own stage, so it made sense that they would borrow the theatre proper while they were here. "They all wrote it together?"

The woman shrugged. "Probably not," she allowed, "but they released it under the Tantalus name, and didn't credit anyone in particular, so darned if I know."

Dagger nodded her thanks and withdrew a bit. Curiosity gnawed at her. Mind made up, she purchased a ticket and filed into the theatre with the rest of the crowd when the time came.

To her guilty surprise, the script was excellent. Well researched, well paced, moving. When Marcus lowered his head to Blank and said  _ Only because I wanted to go with you, _ Dagger was startled to find herself on the brink of tears. It had been a long time since a narrative had made her weep. The ones she had lived through overshadowed them too much.

Just off-stage, behind the edge of the curtain, she caught a glimpse of Cinna, wiping away tears while grinning in a rather satisfied manner. That answered her curiosity for the most part. Others might have had a hand in it, but the script was Cinna's effort first and foremost. She remember suspecting once that he had a literary streak to him. She had not guessed its depth.

After the final bows were done and the audience was filing out, Dagger stole her way backstage. It was remarkable how good at sneaking she had gotten. She'd had to do so much of it over the years.

"Stop right there!" someone shouted. Blank, by the voice.

Dagger obediently froze where she stood in the shadows.

"It's fine," said another voice easily. Marcus. "It's just her highness."

"How did you know?" she asked, stepping forward and throwing back the voluminous blood-red hood.

He shrugged. "You've just got a way about you, I guess."

That teetered on the edge between endearing and discomfiting. Endearing that he had cared to notice. Discomfiting that he had noticed enough to identify her just from that. He was not her enemy, though, so she decided in favour of endearing.

"Looking for Zidane?" Blank guessed. "He's not here today. Had something to do off in the Pinnacle Rocks, he said."

Dagger drew her brows together. The Pinnacle Rocks? Perhaps he had dropped something there when they had landed there together, after the mess with the gargan roo. Or perhaps he simply wanted to see it again. It had certainly had its own beauty, with those great arching roots and clear waters and bright swathes of flowering greenery.

"I wasn't, actually," she corrected. "I'm in the city on business and needed to unwind a little bit."

Blank snorted. "I'll bet. Politicians all have pikes up their behinds, but Lindblum's are worst than most."

Dagger maintained a polite silence, but privately agreed with his assessment.

"Did you like my play?" Cinna asked eagerly, stumping over from where he'd been helping the crew dismantle the set.

"I did," she said honestly. "You have quite a gift, Cinna."

The ugly little man beamed like a squat, red-faced sun and stumped back to his task with his shoulders straighter.

"You two were wonderful, too," she said to Marcus and Blank, who both blushed and ducked their heads. "It takes talent to play roles like that without coming off as maudlin, but you had the whole audience in tears."

"Including you?" Marcus asked softly.

It was her turn to blush. "Yes," she admitted. "Quite an accomplishment. You deserved the ovation you got."

Blank swept an ornate bow. "Much obliged, your highness," he said.

She made a face. "Please, Blank."

"Sorry," he said with an affable grin. "Dagger." With that, he wandered off to help Cinna, leaving her with Marcus.

Immediately, she felt herself relax just a little, almost imperceptibly. It wasn't that she was nervous around Blank and the others, or anything of the kind. She enjoyed their company tremendously. She just felt... easier with Marcus, in some way that she wasn't sure how to explain. Perhaps she thought he expected less of her.

"Heading back up to the castle soon?" he asked after a few moments' companionable silence, watching the hustle and bustle.

She sighed. "I suppose so. The conferences will begin again quite early tomorrow morning. If they didn't, I should like to stay the night down here in the lower city. I would sleep better, I think."

Marcus cleared his throat. "Well, if you ever want to do that while we're here, you can borrow one of the spare bunks belowdecks anytime," he said gruffly. "Ruby'd be thrilled to have some company."

Touched, she reached out to touch his shoulder. She'd like to hug him, but he wouldn't like to be hugged, so she held herself back again. "I truly appreciate that, Marcus," she said with a warm smile. "I'll take you up on it sometime."

He nodded, and brought his eyes back up to her face. "If you're going back to the castle, I'll walk you," he said. That wasn't so much an offer as a statement. "Lindblum's not the most dangerous place, but it's still got its fair share of ne'er-do-wells skulking around. We'd all feel better if we knew you got there in one piece."

She didn't argue the point. Truth be told, she'd be glad for the escort. She could take care of herself, of course — any footpad who tried her would be unpleasantly surprised — but footpads were less likely to bother if she had someone with more obvious muscle with her.

Holding out her hand, she inclined her head, smiling. "Shall we, then?"

He stared at her hand, uncomprehending, until she waggled her fingers at him impatiently. Then, cautiously, still obviously unsure of whether or not he was understanding correctly, he reached out and took her hand in his own. She clasped his to reassure him that he had it right.

Together, hand in hand, they went walking.

Outside of the theatre's immediate vicinity, Lindblum was very quiet at night. The moon sailed overhead, bright and ponderous, lighting their way. If not for that, it would have been easy to lose their way in the peaceful darkness of the unlit streets. Those who lived here would know the way home, but visitors like her were not supposed to be wandering about in the middle of the night.

There was a weirdly illicit thrill to feeling the great city rise around her in near-perfect silence, but for the low hissing of the steam pipes below the streets and the absent-minded humming of the wind as it wove through the alleyways. She could almost feel alone here, despite the thousands of souls breathing deeply in their slumber all around her.

Marcus walked at her side with much more grace than one might expect from a man of his particular physique. Stumpy and bow-legged he might be, but he moved with all the noise of a fox, and said nothing to her for the entire walk.

That was all right. It wasn't the kind of night or the kind of walk that demanded conversation to fill it. Silence suited it, and suited them.

He glanced down at their joined hands several times, as if wondering if he should let go, but whenever she saw him do it she tightened her grip very slightly, and he didn't.

It might have been romantic, if she thought he could ever feel that way about her. She didn't. The gulf was too wide, even if he were inclined to romance in the first place, which she had a feeling he was not. Blank and Zidane were the womanizers, and Cinna did his best, but Marcus never even seemed to try, despite all the romantic heroes he played on the stage.

Perhaps that was part of why she felt so safe with him. Her heart was already spoken for, though the one who had spoken for it seemed to treat it like a treasure in a warehouse, something to visit on occasion but never dedicate himself to.

That was unfair, she chided herself. Their incompatibility was not his fault any more than it was hers. She was a queen, bound by her own choice to her queendom, and he was a wanderer, too restless to ever sit still. Their arrangement was the closest they could get to being together now that she could no longer journey with him as she had in the beginning.

Her heart was spoken for, and she did not waver, but she was horribly lonely all the same.

"Here you are," Marcus said at last, softly.

The gates of the castle were lit, but with the kind of light that seemed to tell anyone approaching that they shouldn't be awake to see it. She felt like she had years ago, sneaking back into the castle after practicing sneaking out of it.

"Thank you for walking me," she said, giving his hand one last gentle squeeze before she let go.

He reclaimed it slowly, cradling it with his other hand, flexing the fingers in and out once or twice as he regarded her from under the impenetrable darkness of his bandanna'd brow. "Anytime," he said gruffly, then, and turned around to vanish back into the voluminous shadows of the silent city.

She watched him go for a moment, observing the way he rolled his feet against the pavement to prevent them from slapping the cobblestones and making sound. It wasn't like she couldn't move quietly herself, but she tended to do so on the balls of her feet, and it prevented her from moving very quickly. It was always useful to have more tricks up her sleeve, just in case.

Surprised by a sudden, jaw-cracking yawn, she turned away at last and slipped into the castle. The guards gave her no trouble, though she thought she caught the odd disapproving glower through the masks of their helmets. That might have bothered her, once, but she had seen too much and been too many places to think their opinion should matter now.

Back in her chambers, she checked the time, and grimaced when she saw how far past midnight it was. She would be dead on her feet on the morrow. All the same, though, she didn't regret having gone out. Her spirit felt refreshed, even if her body did not. She would make it through all the councils and meetings and consultations, and she would stand up for her people no matter how much her legs ached.

That was the duty of the queen.

**x**


	3. Water of Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Profitable partnerships.

Two months later, a pebble bounced of the window of her royal chambers in Alexandria an hour after dusk. It rattled down the sloped roof below, then dropped into the courtyard and bounced a couple of times before settling. It wasn't all that loud, but she winced at each impact. Surely the guards would come looking if he was this brazen.

"Marcus!" she hissed out the window.

He waved up at her, unperturbed. "Thought you might like to get out of that gilded tower for a bit," he said affably, projecting his voice with years of stage experience so that she could hear him easily but no one in the courtyard would hear much of anything.

Garnet sagged, fighting with herself. Fighting with  _ Dagger _ , who did want to go out, while Garnet thought she should stay in and finish drawing up the budget for the new grain storehouse.

"You can't be queen all the time," he said softly, when she didn't answer. "You have to just be a person sometimes too."

Dagger won the battle, if not the war. "I'm coming down," she said, tossing her ropes over the sill.

Half an hour later, she was drinking from a heavy glass of something dark and bitter while the crowd at the mini-theatre pressed around her. They'd made an agreement with the bar next door for liquor catering, which profited them both considerably. Garnet had never touched the stuff, but Dagger had, and she was open to this new experience. It tasted like the underside of a damp hay bale. Awful, but every sip warmed her through.

Lav Leyderce was playing with Tantalus again, in the oily courtier role he did so well. Ruby was resplendent in her eponymous red gown, silver hair piled artfully atop her head. Blank was playing the romantic lead tonight, and his hair clashed rather terribly with her dress. Everyone was having an excellent time, though, and didn't care to nitpick.

Marcus sat down at her elbow. She hadn't felt him approaching, but she didn't flinch or startle even though he was close enough that their elbows touched on the table. "Enjoying the show?" he asked.

"Very much," she agreed, taking another sip of the dark swill in her glass. "No thanks to... whatever this is."

"Uisghe," he said. "You can thank the spreading international trade for that. It's a Conde Petie specialty."

She grimaced. "I might have known. Lovely folk, the dwarves, but such strange habits."

Marcus shrugged, almost grinning.

The warmth of his muscled forearm against hers was nice. Steadying, against the dizzying pack of people around her and the strength of the... uisghe. Really awful stuff. She thought she had better finish the glass and go back for more.

An hour later, after the play had ended, the mini-theatre's patrons squeezed out the door and piled into the bar next door. Dagger let herself be swept along, hardly able to feel her own body through the floating, dreamlike sensation of otherness that had overtaken her. It might taste like the barn floor, but it was wonderful stuff. Wonderful.

"Steady on," muttered Marcus at her elbow. "I think you've had enough."

She nodded reluctantly. Though hangovers were not something she had experienced many of, once was enough to know she didn't want to have one again. It might already be too late, but she could at least stop herself from making it any worse. Garnet would hate her in the morning as it was.

When had she started thinking of Garnet as something distinct from Dagger? Not a whole other person, or personality, of course; they were both her, and she remembered being both as she switched between them. There was still a line, though, a definite shift when she focused on one or the other. Garnet Til Alexandros, queen of Alexandria, who did her duty to her people with quiet but earnest passion. Dagger, a girl from nowhere born on a cliff-side trail, who had all the adventures Garnet wished she could have but didn't feel free to indulge in. Garnet was the queen, and Dagger was the woman, and they were her but not each other.

"Earlier, what you said," she mumbled, leaning into Marcus' shoulder so that he would hear her.

He turned his head to squint at her.

She searched for the words. "About not being the queen all the time, just being a person sometimes too. How did you know?"

"Know?" he echoed. "I don't know what you think I know, but what you've been doing to yourself is plain as the nose on your face. You deny your personal needs in favour of the realm's, and that's important for a queen when the times make it necessary, but it's not something you should be doing all the time whether it helps your people or not. What good would it do them if you keeled over less than a decade into your reign, out of sheer exhaustion?"

It was the most words she'd ever heard him say at once. She stared at him, trying to accept his words though her spirit rebelled. He wasn't a stupid man. Far from it. If he thought that was what she was doing, likelier than not he was right, and it bore thinking about.

"I will think on this," she informed him primly.

He shrugged. "Suit yourself. Dance?"

Tantalus' band was tuning up to play a merry jig or two, and she was more awake than she felt like she had been in weeks.

"It would be my honour," she said, offering her hand.

He took it, stood up, and led her to the little space cleared for dancing. She went to him gladly, pliant as a wet reed with all that uisghe in her veins, and danced until the lantern-lights spun.

**x**


End file.
